Garage-Top Deck

This is a rebuild of a deck atop a strangely built house from the 1970s.  The garage is an addition with and exceptionally low-slope roof -- on the order of 1" every 6'. 


This time I remembered to get "before" pictures.  The house was recently purchased and here are the problems:
1) The railing was exceptionally weak.
2) The stairs were wobbly.
3) The deck was old and rotting (std fir decking).
4) The roof was leaking a bit
5) The east wall of the addition was sided with vinyl, and leaked far too much around the window, causing the chip board wall to rot.

It doesn't show in this picture, but the railing posts were only 2x2s screwed into the end grains of the joists lying on top of the garage, which had begun to rot.

Lotsa weeds growing up out of the deck too.  Many of the boards came up quite easily with a crow bar due to rot of the underlying joists.

After stripping, we found the plywood sheathing to be in excellent shape, with just a bit of staining from previous leaks, but thoroughly sound.

Ready for roofing.

The main house siding was more of a paper product, than a chip board, but the east wall was only vinyl, which is impossible to seal around door and window openings.  And since all for the water on the deck rolls down the side wall, much of it ends up in the wall on the edges of the window. I also found a nice little infestation of insects beneath the vinyl.

Water damage and rot clear through the chip board sheathing and into the garage.

Cancer removed.

And replaced with exterior grade plywood of the proper thickness.

The siding was closest match I could find in size and thickness, but the texture didn't match exactly.
We got the siding and roofing on just in time for a nice 3-day rain that thoroughly tested the new surfaces.  No leaks.  Ready for decking.

The customer chose Silver Maple Trex decking instead of natural wood, mostly for the guaranteed longevity. And it was the right choice.  Looks nice.

Looking down the steps prior to installing the railings.  The customer had small children so a temporary gate was a reminding for the kids not to climb the stairs.

I couldn't think of any sturdier method to install the rails that by bolting a foot-long overlap through the side of the garage structure.  This railing will not weaken quickly.  The customer chose redwood stained slightly redder than natural. 
It's too small a detail to see in this picture, but there is a 1 1/4" drip edge just below the deck that throws the deck runoff away from the wall, instead of letting it all dribble down the surface of the wall.

Solid new stairs with a low railing for the kids.

Solid top stair landing supported by 4x6 posts.

The bit of color makes the house look nice too.

Solid stair railing.

It's almost like a big rooftop crib, or a birds nest, up in the shade of the trees.

With a gate for the youngest ("Charlie Bear").

Trex Deck Rebuild

A good friend had a deck that had a rotting sub-structure beneath some fairly original Trex decking that seemed in reasonable shape, though most Trex decking from that era had been recalled due to flaking. But the rotting underlying substructure was causing the deck surface to undulate in a way that was becoming quite dangerous. Sorry, I have no picture of the “before” deck. 

I really should spend some time getting "before" starting demolition.  This was a tricky job because to save money we salvaged all of the existing decking, which is already cut to exactly the right shape.  Therefore, we cut the decking off the rotting substructure and placed it in order on the lawn while we rebuilt the substructure.  Wish I had a picture of that too.

Plus we added a built-in bench on the south end.  Here is the structure beneath the seat.

Plus we replaced the original bench surfaces after sturdifying the posts.  Solid, 3 feet deep into concrete.

Deck and benches complete.

Paint, Shutters and a Fence

You can see that I’m catching up on posting projects that I did last summer. Many more to follow. I was quite busy all summer. 

In fact, what usually happens is I get done with a project and the customer asks me to keep going. Here, the customer that I built the redwood deck for asked me to paint his house, build him some shutters, and build a fence. 

This threw something of a wrench into my scheduling of projects.

The customer was from Connecticut, and has an affinity for the imagery of spe whales, so we put that on his shutters. 

Close up. 

The shutters do improve the appearance of the house. 

And he also loves fly fishing, so the back shutters have flies and jumping trout. 

Sorry, no pic of the fence. I got too busy and forgot to take a picture. Six foot tall, dog-eared and stained the same as the deck. It’s only a partial fence and ends against a large fir tree. I got cute and cut the last board wiggly to match the shape of the tree trunk to within a half inch.

Redwood Deck

Here’s a really nice deck I did for a good friend. 

The above pic is close to final but there is still a bit of work left. Cable rails, stain on the steps, etc. 

I failed to take any pictures until we were well along. So here is a pic of the stout undercarriage of this deck. I had recently completed a pole barn so this is basically stout enough to hold up a large barn. Or a truck. Or a tank. It has 6x6 pressure treated posts on 8’ centers with double 2x12 girders through bolted. Plus the railings and posts are planted 3’ deep. 

See?  Stout. The first thing I put in is the temporary frame surrounding the deck to show the final dimensions.  After customer OK, I then build the support structure inside it. I spend a lot of time on the alignment of what is essentially a mock up, making sure it is aligned and looks good from every angle. 

You can see it turned out pretty strait. And it lines up perfectly with the existing concrete stairs. 

At this point I spent a bit of time mocking up the built in seats. I thoroughly tested the seat angles for comfort by having every customer and contractor that happened by try out the mockup. Comfortable for tall and short alike, without cushions. 

Here it is, basically done. The seats on the side make it feel very comfortable and protected. I’ve already spent many a summer’s eve playing music and gazing at the stars. And the open end now has cable rails on it that don’t block the view. 

The stairs down to the large back yard. The yard falls away from the house so that the far edge of the deck is a good 4 feet off the ground, so even though the end is open, it feels very protected. The deck does a great job of adding significant living space to a somewhat small house. 

Another Bath, This Time Make It a Double

This one is a serious remodel, to include moving walls and fixtures, tiling multiple rooms/surfaces, and a complete fabrication of a shower. 

 

After. 

 

Before, from the bedroom. Here is a typical 1970s 2x16 closet. And the curious thing was the huge amount of unused space at the end of the bed in the master. 

 

And the master bath had only 30 sf, with about 32" for the toilet. 

 

And a mere 2 ft vanity. 

 

And the guest bath had 50 sf

 

And a double vanity. 

 

We spent five hours trying to reconfigure things to get better use out of the space. 

 

While the owners was in Moab for the week, we hurriedly moved the wall in on the second bath after removing one of the sinks and set the bath up for use while gutting and rebuilding the master bath. 

 

Here we knocked out the wall at the back of the closet and will move it a foot into the second bath, whose dimensions will now be set. 

 

Demolition for the whole project fit in the back of my old F150. Just one load. 

 

Wall between the bedroom closet and the second bath is temporarily gone. Closet wall is gone too. 

 

The closet has morphed from 2x8 to 5 deep by 6 wide. We did a full size mockup in order to test whether a 5x5 closet could work as a walk in. It couldn't. Minimum 6 ft wide required. So we went back to the drawing board to find 5 sf somewhere in the plan. It took a while but this is our final solution. And it worked. 

 

Now we have room for a much larger no-door shower. And since the room is still small, we chose to make it seem larger by cutting a notch out of the shower wall so visibility into the shower and from the shower into the rest of the bath will make the room seem larger. 

 

Here is the underlying rubber gasket for the packed sand shower floor. 

 

Corners folded up for no leakage. 

 

The packed sand installed. It's actually concrete that won't shrink as it cures. Graded gracefully (1/4" per ft) to the center drain. 

 

Wonderboard installed so all of the tile has 1/2" of concrete backing for solidity. 

 

Two nooks for shower necssities. Keeps the shower looking clutter free from the outside. 

 

The floor is now tiles, after a complete layer of Red Guard has been applied to provide the second impermeable layer in the shower. 

 

A corner seat -- quartz from Granite Concepts in Lewiston -- was added because the customer seems to be in a cast or boot about a quarter of every year. Nicely smoothed on the edge. 

 

Electric floor heat mat. I put one of these in just about every bathhroom now. 

 

Concrete poured on the electric heat mat. And tile being laid out for look. 

 

The floor heat thermostat is in and working. 

 

Tile laid on the floor. Grout next. 

 

The finished bath with new vanity. 

 

Nice new low flow toilet. These are practically free now with the rebate. 

 

And the glass for the shower wall is installed. Nice and open, yet clean looking. 

 

The second bath used similar tile in a slightly different pattern.